- August 12, 2024
Washington, D.C. – Vladimir Putin is scheduled to meet on August 19 in Baku with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev.
The Putin-Aliyev relationship is stronger than ever. In September 2023, Putin and Aliyev colluded as Russian security forces stepped aside allowing the Azerbaijani military to launch a full-scale assault that and ethnically cleansed over 100,000 Armenians from their ancestral homeland of Nagorno-Karabakh. A special report released by Freedom House on July 1 found that Azerbaijan’s actions in and around Nagorno-Karabakh since the 2020 war “meet the criteria for ethnic cleansing.”
Human Rights Watch has consistently reported Azerbaijan’s “appalling human rights record,” with abuses escalating unabated through 2023. Freedom House ranks Azerbaijan with a “democracy percentage” of one percent and a “global freedom score” of 7/100. The State Department’s latest Human Rights Report corroborates these findings, detailing unlawful killings, torture, and severe restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and association.
Aliyev is an obstacle for peace in the South Caucasus consistently preferring a greater Russian presence and condemning U.S. and EU mediation efforts between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Aliyev recently signed a strategic alliance agreement with China and Russia. Additionally, Azerbaijan continues to hold 23 ethnic Armenians as hostages and occupies over 200 sq km of sovereign Armenia territory. It has been widely reported that Azerbaijan launders Russian gas for export to the EU and other countries.
Conversely, U.S.-Armenia ties continue to grow in all spheres with Armenia recently declared a strategic partner of the U.S.
The U.S. must hold Azerbaijan accountable by demanding that Aliyev release all political prisoners and remove all of its security sources from sovereign Armenia territory.
About Global ARM: Global ARM is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization formed in 2022 to implement smarter, stronger and more effective Pro-Armenia, Pro-Artsakh lobbying in Washington, D.C. Global ARM is non-partisan and not aligned with any political party or government inside or outside of Armenia.